Tank of the month: June 2025

SALVATORE BELTEMPO

For the tank of the month we chose Salvatore's, which struck us for the size of its colonies and the harmony of the tank, despite a setup that many would call "makeshift"... but let's start from the beginning.

Salvatore Beltempo is from Manfredonia, a small port town on the Gargano, in the province of Foggia.

He tells us that as a child he always had both freshwater and marine aquariums, thanks to his father, who passed the passion on to him.

Salvatore still remembers with great happiness going to the shop with his father to buy his first fish and corals, back when social media and the Internet did not yet exist.

The turning point for Salvatore came about 15 years ago, when he discovered Acquaportal, the well-known blog on marine fishkeeping.

There he discovered those who would become his mentors, whom we cannot fail to name: the masters Franco Dodaro and Paolo Cazzato.

Thanks to them, the spark was lit inside Salvatore that pushed him to take one more step towards his first setup.

At this point, though, Salvatore, who describes himself as very methodical, decided to study first, as he had a lot of time to devote to it, and he did so for 2/3 years, learning from friends' experiences and from books on marine fishkeeping.

But we all know that saying and doing are two very different things.

Some time went by, and he decided to start with an "easy" tank that would serve as a training ground, since it was Salvatore's first experience.

So he decided, as I think most aquarists do at the beginning, to save on every kind of equipment.

Salvatore started with a freshwater Pet Company tank turned into a marine one using an external overflow.

The setup Salvatore chose is a DSB made with sand that Salvatore remembers came from Japan and still contained plastic residues, started with Tropic Marin bacteria.

After 4 months of cycling, Salvatore began stocking the aquarium with the first fish and corals, to understand how the aquarium was evolving.

Salvatore confesses that, despite the aquarium's periods of greatest splendour, he has also gone through many periods of what we call plagues, including dinoflagellates, cyanobacteria and flatworms, which forced Salvatore to throw away several large colonies in the aquarium.

Since it started out as an "easy" tank, it was supposed to run for 1 year, 2 at most, precisely to gain experience, but we can tell you that the tank is still running.

Since starting it, Salvatore has changed several things in equipment and husbandry, and has also tried various products to understand their effect on the tank; today the tank is 6 years old.

Below we list the equipment and the various information on husbandry and the types of products used to maintain his tank:

- Pet Company freshwater tank 120*40*50h

- external overflow

- Eshopps AF100 sump

- Jecod 6000 return at 60% (I have a non-return valve that kills the head pressure)

- Teco TK500, new type

- Dalua GW12 skimmer

- Nyos Torq loaded with Aquaforest Life Bio Fill (a couple of litres)

- Chaetomorpha refugium (20 litres) lit by a Tunze EcoChic on a reverse photoperiod (on at 23:00 and off at 11:00)

- DSB husbandry, but partly hybridised with the Berlin method

- 2 GNC Blu-ray Pro M on for 12 hours with 100 min of sunrise and 200 of sunset (whites 60%, reds 75%, blues 100%)

- 1 120 cm Orphek Blue Sky bar on for about 7 hours

- Modern Reef RKS 7.7 Balling, 65 ml a day x 4 products

- Yorah bacteria: Bacter Nitrix 4 ml, Bacter Mix 4 ml, Enzim 7 ml every 15 days

- Yorah Carbon Mix 5 ml a day

- dry foods: 3 kinds of Hikari, Ocean Nutrition spirulina, Yorah algae mix, Aquaristica freeze-dried Artemia

- frozen food: living by the sea, with live and fresh fish available, I make it myself and freeze it

- coral food: nothing at the moment, but I was dosing Yorah Full Energy, or alternatively I have always done well with Easy Reef EasySPSEvo + Easy Booster

- I use home-made Reef Snow every week.

Finally, Salvatore stresses that he knows the tank was born with some "mistakes" from the start but, despite this, I can say it remains a tank worthy of respect.

We end by writing down the dream Salvatore hopes to make come true within 2/3 years: setting up the aquarium of his dreams, a 120x70x70 aquarium, with the experience gained thanks to his first and only aquarium.

We can only thank Salvatore for the time he gave us and wish him the best of luck with his future project.